The origins of how dogs became man’s best friend across large swaths of the globe are becoming more clear.
Dogs may have been widely distributed throughout western Eurasia at least 14,200 years ago, but the exact timing of their origins toward domestication had been largely uncertain, according to researchers.
Scientists are now getting a better understanding of when domesticated dogs arrived in the West, a paper published Wednesday in Nature found.
Previous research pointed to dogs likely diverging from wolves more than 15,000 years ago, during the Palaeolithic period, according to the paper. The earliest recognizable dog remains found in Europe date to at least 14,000 years ago, and the previous genetic record of a domesticated dog was from about 10,900 years ago, the researchers said.
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 216 dog and wolf remains from Europe and nearby regions, according to the paper.
The earliest specimen the researchers analyzed was an early dog from a site in Kesslerloch, Switzerland, that dated from about 14,200 years ago through radiocarbon dating.
Dogs were the only domesticated animal present in Europe before agriculture, the researchers said.
There was likely an expansion of humans during the end of the last Ice Age from the Balkan Peninsula to the surrounding region, in which they interacted with other hunter-gatherers and brought their dogs with them.
While the researchers are unsure about the kind of role dogs played at the time, it appears that they were “useful” to the humans they surrounded.
Both studies provide strong genetic evidence for the early presence and spread of dogs in Europe — confirming the presence of dogs in Europe back to the late Paleolithic period and offering new insights into how ancient human populations migrated, according to the paper.